The Autumn Statement offers an opportunity for the Government to reiterate its
essential purpose: cutting the deficit, controlling spending, entrenching
the recovery and reforming public services

This week, the Government amply demonstrated its tendency to overreact to events – and to disappoint its long-suffering supporters. George Osborne told the Today programme that he is in favour of capping payday loan charges, saying: “We are stepping in where government needs to step in to create the rules of the market.” New rights have been promised to parents to allow them to share post-natal leave. There has been a U-turn on cigarettes, after David Cameron announced that plain packaging was back on his list of things to do.

The problem with these measures is not only their statist, interventionist strain, but also that many explicitly contradict the Tories’ previous position. The same was true when the Governor of the Bank of England said that he was putting the brakes on the Funding for Lending Scheme, which was set up to encourage mortgage lending and personal loans. This was a tacit acceptance that the Government’s easy-money approach to housing has started to over-stimulate demand. Yet only weeks ago, ministers were dismissing the very idea that a housing bubble existed.

The unfortunate impression is of a Government, and a Prime Minister, that follows the news cycle rather than sets the agenda. Of course, not everything is going wrong. Despite the pressures of Coalition, which undoubtedly make compromise necessary, there is much about this Government that is recognisably and reassuringly Tory – raising standards in schools, reforming welfare to make work pay, creating a more competitive tax structure, pledging a referendum on the EU and so on. Above all, the economic picture is improving dramatically.

But the narrative is confused by flip-flops. Consider the tortuous history of the Tory stance on energy. In 2010, Mr Cameron pledged to be an environmentalist prime minister who would do everything in his power to save the planet. That meant backing the green taxes inherited from Ed Miliband. The policy was wrong – but at least it was coherent.

Yet when Mr Miliband astutely identified that people were concerned about rising energy bills, things started to change. At first, the Tories attacked Labour’s call for a price freeze as unworkable – as, indeed, it is. George Osborne said the idea was drawn up “on the back of a fag packet”. None the less, the polls showed that something had to be done to assuage consumers’ fears. So eco-taxes became, in a quote attributed to Mr Cameron, “green crap” that had to go (an idea that has not yet made it into concrete policy). Then, this week, it was reported that the Government had asked the big energy firms to freeze prices voluntarily – essentially a pale imitation of Mr Miliband’s approach. No 10 denied the story was true – and has now unveiled its own package of reforms to cut bills and green taxes. This may help consumers, but the sense of confusion will have done little to reassure them – or the energy companies who are simultaneously being asked to invest billions to renew our generating capability.

Mr Miliband’s socialism is certainly no cure for our country’s ills, but it does give the impression that he is a conviction politician. Mr Cameron, by contrast, is laying out a compelling Tory vision one minute, and veering off course the next. In particular, given the inconsistency of the Government’s attitude towards state intervention, the floating voter might well look at the rival parties, and conclude that at least with Labour, they will get a party that will intervene decisively rather than just half-heartedly.

The situation is not beyond repair. On Thursday, the Chancellor will unveil his Autumn Statement. This is an opportunity for the Government to reiterate its essential purpose – cutting the deficit, controlling spending, entrenching the recovery and reforming public services. And if Mr Osborne does not feel able to give voters more of their own money via tax cuts, he must at the very least refrain from taking in a single extra penny. The burden on the middle classes and wealth-creators is far too high already, and cannot be raised merely to fund the pet schemes of free-spending politicians. In this, as in everything, the way to respond to Labour’s populist platitudes is not to offer a watered-down copy, but to show voters why grown-up Tory government is a far more effective alternative.